Transportation of biological/chemical materials is a critical task. The chemical materials carry the risk of being flammable, explosive and corrosive and so on. When exposed, these materials may cause hazards, either to humans or environmental or both. Biological materials may be of several kinds: infectious and affecting humans or animals, clinical specimens, medical waste etc. when exposed, the infectious biological materials are capable of causing temporary or permanent disability, life threatening or fatal disease to humans or animals. Under these circumstances, taking proper measures becomes a necessary condition while transporting chemical or biological materials.
The national or international agencies have prescribed categories and guidelines for packing and transporting such materials. The materials may be sent by cargo aircraft, by road transport, by courier or by post. In any case, the packaging must meet classification and labeling requirements.
In addition to ensuring that the material being transported is appropriately packaged (i.e. as per the requirements of the transporter or as per government norms or as per industry norms, as the case may be), there has been a growing need to transport chemical or biological materials under controlled environment.
In this direction, U.S. Pat. No. 5,965,410 (hereinafter US'410) discloses methods and devices for controlling process parameters such as fluid temperature, concentration and the like of material (e.g., fluid) in a microfluidic system. US'410 mention use of heating elements which typically include external resistive heating coils. The method disclosed in US'410 applies a selectable current through a fluid and controls the current to elevate the temperature of the system.
Similar need had arisen in the field of cargo shipment to preserve the health of the goods. Internet of Things technology has been effective in providing answers to the problems in this field. Internet of Things is a network of physical objects that communicate and share the data remotely over a network.
U.S. patent application publication number US20130271290 discloses an apparatus and a method for controlling cargo parameters in a microenvironment of a shipping container during transit. The system comprises a sensor which measures a cargo parameter, surrounding or within the container, during the transit; a module device coupled to the sensor, receiving cargo parameter from the sensor during transit; a remote device coupled to the module device. The module device herein is configured to modify or control the refer parameter during transit based on the cargo parameter. The remote device may be smartphone, laptop, desktop, kiosk or a cloud computing services that are delivered as a service over the Internet.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,461,958 discloses systems for monitoring and control of various conditions in transport containers. The system comprises a microprocessor unit coupled to a first bidirectional communication port for communication with a container's controller disposed inside the container; a global positioning module for determining a location of the container; a transceiver of local wireless communication; a transceiver of long-range wireless communication; and means for monitoring and controlling communication. The GPS and the transceivers are controlled by the microprocessors. The system may also act as a detachable unit.
According to a recent study, 25 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to be in market by 2020 out of which at least 5% of the market will be in the field of sensor based technologies. There is a need for continuous monitoring of temperature, light, sound, vibration etc. while transporting sensitive biological materials or high energy materials over a period of time.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,225,793 refers to accessing sensor data from sensor nodes in a sensor network and aggregating the sensor data for communicating to an indexer.
Recent research show vast applicability of the IoT technology in the field of transportation of chemical and biological materials. Paper presented at “International Conference on Information Technology and Management Innovation” entitled “An intelligent transportation system for hazardous materials based on the Internet of Things” by “Liming Cal, Wu Xia, Peng Li, Long Zhang, Jing Liu” (ISBN No. 978-94-6252-112-4) discloses a transportation system which does following functions: parameters collection, information management, intelligent alerting and rescue dispatch. The system consists of vehicle terminal system, wireless communication system and monitoring center system. Vehicle terminal system is responsible for data collection; Wireless communication system is responsible for packaging the data and sending the data to the monitoring center via TCP/IP protocol; Monitoring center system is responsible for information analysis and management, intelligent alerting and rescue dispatch.
Along with monitoring of the system and sending data to the monitoring center, few systems employ visual or audio-visual indicator for indicating change in the environmental parameters being monitored. Such indicators may be an LED or a barcode. In systems containing LED, such as demonstrated in U.S. Pat. No. 7,149,658, the LED illuminates in response to the environment condition to which the product is subjected transcending a limit.
In systems involving barcode, usually the barcode is dynamic which changes its pattern in response to the change in environment conditions.
PCT publication number WO2016106292 discloses an apparatus for cold chain monitoring of perishable goods which comprises environmental sensor to monitor at least one environmental parameter; a controller to log a plurality of readings from each of the at least one environmental sensors; and a machine readable display to display at least one alarm status associated with the readings via a barcode. The barcode in the said patent document may be one-dimensional or two-dimensional, and has static portion and a dynamic portion associated with the readings. Two dimensional barcode symbologies may include data matrix, MaxiCode, PDF 41, PDF 417 Truncated, QR Code, Codablock F, Aztec Code, etc.
U.S. patent application publication number US20160292486 claims methods and apparatus for providing and reading 2D barcodes that include dynamic environmental data, where modules of the barcode may change state in response to environmental conditions. The sensor information may be of an environmental, physical or biological nature, and records a change in status of the environmental or biological condition to which the labeled product has been exposed. Sensor dye chemistry is employed and when a specified condition of the sensed property occurs it causes a change in the color state of sensor dye modules embedded within the sensor-augmented two-dimensional barcode, encoding sensor digital information. The barcode comprises of a substrate, a two-dimensional error-correcting barcode symbol provided on the substrate, a first layer provided on the substrate in a permanent color state; and a second layer provided on the substrate. The second layer contains a chemical dye that is responsive to the occurrence of an environmental, physical or biological condition, thereby resulting in changes in colour when such condition occurs. The two-dimensional error-correcting barcode symbol may be Data Matrix, QR Code, Aztec Code, MaxiCode, PDF417 and Dot Code symbologies.
U.S. patent application publication number US20100078482 pertains to a barcode display and reader which can be used to transfer dynamic information. A dynamic barcode system includes a microprocessor connected to a sensor or group of sensors. The microprocessor connects to a barcode display. Data collected by the sensor or group of sensors is processed by the microprocessor and sent to the barcode display. A barcode reader reads the barcode display. The barcode display, microprocessor and group of sensors are arranged on a packet which is attachable to a specimen to be monitored. The barcode reader has an infrared transmitter for sending a signal to an infrared receiver associated with the barcode display. The infrared receiver upon receiving a signal from the barcode reader sends a signal to the microprocessor requesting that the microprocessor send requested data for viewing on the barcode display. The displayed barcode is then read by the barcode reader. In such a manner, continually changing data collected by the sensors can be stored and retrieved as desired.
While a lot of research is on-going, there still exists need to provide IoT enabled method, device and system for the purposes of monitoring and analyse live parameter data of the materials under transportation from devices that forms the entire connectivity network.